Rockefeller Ctr., 1937. St. Thomas’ Church at left, site of Jackie O’s
funeral. Fairchild.

Simply Add Boiling Water, 1937. Photo by Weegee.

The old Met(ropolitan Opera), Garment District, 1937. Weegee.

Still clean and gleaming, the Towers of Zenith, 1937.

Berenice Abbott, 1938

Duke Mansion, a tobacco tycoon’s, 1 E. 78th St. at Fifth Ave.

40th between 6th and 7th. Zoning generates the form.

Flam &amp; Flam, Lawyers, 165 E. 121st St.

Wall Street from 60 Wall.

From 60 Wall Street.

Cathedral Parkway (110th Street).

Columbus Circle. Building with Coke sign another of Hearst’s skyscraper
bases. Unlike the one Foster is currently completing, this one was torn down
for the Gulf and Western Building, now re-imagined by Phillip Johnson as the
Trump International Hotel.

Jefferson Market with the hulking, deco Women’s House of Detention behind
(now demolished for a park). From the barred, open windows, the ladies would
hurl obscenities at passersby.

504-506 Broome St. Ancient.

Union Square West. A hilarious jumble gets A+ for accidental design. These
lots once held town houses. Their dainty footprints have been preserved, so
the buildings have a delicate scale regardless of their height. One is a
miniature skyscraper. Scale-obsessed NIMBYs take note: you need to object to
a building’s footprint, not its height.

From Jersey, the classic skyline view.

Subway Portrait. Walker Evans, 1938.

Artists and Poets, Washington Sq., 1939

42nd Street Beauties, looking west, 1939.

Clipper, 1939. Europe in 29 hours.

DC-4 Over Midtown, 1939. Hood’s Daily News Building lower right.

Fish market meets railroad under Roebling’s bridge, 1939.

Abandoned in the downpour, 1939. West Side.

Forty-second Street.

Sixth Avenue El, 1940.

Downtown from Empire State. Andre Kertesz, 1940.

1940 Photos by Andreas Feininger

Ninth Avenue El, 8th at 127th, Harlem.

The Bowery.

Bryant Park.

Downtown Skyport with Cities Service Tower.

The original twin towers.

Tower trio. Slender flattop is Irving Trust, tower at right now belongs to
Trump.

New York’s greatest walk.

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

Girlies.

Downtown gunsmith.

Three icons: Empire State; Horn and Hardart (The Automat), New York’s
original restaurant chain, long gone; lamp standard, now being re-installed.

At the foot of 42nd Street: Normandie with three fat stacks in the middle,
Queen Mary with three skinnier stacks at bottom. Normandie burned here, Nazi
sabotage claimed. Normandie was that time’s biggest and fastest (Blue
Ribbon).

1941 Photos by Feininger

Forty-second Street. Mid-size Beaux-Arts skyscraper on north side of street
is Times Building, of New Year’s fame. Building still exists but reclad in
mid-sixties.

Classic skyline view with America, junior edition United States.

Downtown from Jersey.

Midtown from Jersey.

Horror vacui, Hebrew style.

The hats match the canopies. Macy’s, 34th St.

Too much city? Here’s a brief Intermission from the 1870’s (we’ll be
back in color)…

* * *
Tisayac by Eadweard Muybridge, best known for time-lapse photos of men and
horses running before graph paper backgrounds. He also famously murdered his
wife’s lover in San Francisco.